


dark bird is home

by fuckener



Category: Persona 5
Genre: December Spoilers, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-22
Updated: 2017-05-22
Packaged: 2018-11-03 13:26:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10968165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fuckener/pseuds/fuckener
Summary: On Christmas Eve, Akira calls Ryuji.





	dark bird is home

It's too late to ask him over but Ryuji answers with an almost immediate, _ain't like i got other plans._

Akira doubts he’ll get another chance to be selfish after tonight. He may as well take it. 

Besides, between the cafe being empty, Morgana being gone, and the numbing inevitability of what will happen at the police station tomorrow morning, he isn't sure what to do with himself.

It's an odd feeling. Doesn't seem to fit him anymore. 

Cleaning doesn't work take his mind off of things like it normally does. He ends up washing the same coffee cup for ten minutes straight, staring at a point in the wall and plotting out a vague confession in his head in a way that feels detached, clinical - less like his life and more like the plot of a convoluted movie. 

That makes sense, though. He scrubs at the inside of the cup hard enough to scrape the porcelain and stares. After tomorrow, it won’t really be his life anymore. 

Sae said they'd want him to apologise. He tests the words out in his head: _I'm sorry_. He swallows around something hard and jagged feeling in his throat. _I’m sorry._

There's nothing, not a single thing he would do differently, even now - and it wouldn’t matter if he did. No matter what wrathful God they destroyed, he was always doomed to a four-by-four room in juvenile hall. It was always leading here - he can see it now, this fixed, hopeless point on the timeline of his life.

 _Shit_ \- he looks down. The cup is in two pieces in his hands. A line of blood trickles down his palm.

He sighs, quietly. Wraps the two halves up and gets rid of them. Stands at the sink for a while with his hands wrist deep in lukewarm water, watches as the cut across his hand slowly dyes it red. Does nothing. 

The kitchen smells of Blue Mountain, like always. He closes his eyes. 

He's going to miss it here, is all. 

It’s best not to think about it. He finishes up as best he can, writes _sorry_ on a napkin, leaves it and some money on the countertop for Sojiro to find tomorrow morning. It’s for the best, he reminds himself again.

The door chimes. 

“You just been down here waiting on me?” 

Ryuji unwraps his scarf from around his neck and drops onto a stool, red-nosed, tired-eyed, grinning. 

Akira wipes his hands on a towel and shrugs. Makes himself smile. “Just thinking.”

“About how we destroyed a god today and saved all of humanity and stuff?” Ryuji offers excitedly. “Same here.”

Akira hasn’t actually had a lot of time to linger on destroying the Holy Grail and saving all of humanity and - everything. He had about twenty minutes to enjoy not being dead, and then Sae had shown up and given him that hard, unhappy smile he thought he’d seen the last of months ago.

He breezes past it. “Sorry I asked you over so late.”

“Nah, don’t worry about it man. My mom ain’t home tonight, anyway.” Ryuji taps on the countertop, no rhythm, all enthusiasm. “Besides, it’s not like I can sleep after everything that went down today, you know?”

Sort of. The last of the adrenaline wore off about ten seconds into his conversation with Sae. Right now Akira feels bone-tired and wide awake with anxiety.

Ryuji stifles a huge yawn into his shoulder. Akira shouldn’t have invited him over. Of course he’s exhausted after the day they’ve had; of course he’d ignore that if Akira asked him to. This really is selfish.

“You want a coffee?” he offers.

Ryuji hums and rubs his eyes. “Can’t turn it down when you make it.”

Sojiro told him once that anyone who drinks coffee after 6PM is ‘playing a dangerous game.’ It’s currently past 11PM. Akira’s appetite for danger apparently knows no bounds today.

He knows how to make it the exact way Ryuji likes, and Ann and Yusuke and Makoto and - everybody. They all have little preferences that make the difference. It took time to figure them all out.

“Hey - you okay?” 

Akira looks up. Ryuji frowns at him.

“You look kinda sad,” he says.

Akira pauses, his brain staticky, and then he shakes his head. “I’m concentrating.” He quirks his mouth. “This work really takes it out of you.”

Ryuji yawns again, slumping over onto the counter with his head on his arms. He smiles at Akira, sleepy and contented looking. “You’re tellin’ me.”

He sets the steaming mug in front of Ryuji and Ryuji’s eyes flash, pale and wide. He grabs Akira’s wrist. 

“You’re _bleeding_ ,” he says.

He looks up at Akira this way he’s never looked at him before, wide-eyed and uncomprehending, and then his eyes flick back down to his hand. More delicately than Akira’s ever seen him do anything, Ryuji thumbs just below the line of the cut.

He doesn’t look up when he speaks. “Is everything - are you okay?”

His thumb moves forward, hesitating for a brief moment, and then starts moving back and forth, a slow touch. The skin of Akira’s palm is electrified.

“I’m fine,” he says, and doesn’t pull his hand back. He stares at the worried line between Ryuji’s eyebrows. His hand twitches in Ryuji’s grasp. “Just tired.”

It’s not convincing. Ryuji hasn’t seen him bleed topside because it’s just not a thing he does the real world. He doesn’t to stumble around, break things, cut himself by accident - he isn’t this sad helpless kid he’s trapped inside right now. 

With a strange numbness he realises that his hands are shaking.

He jerks out of Ryuji’s grip. Shit. _Shit._

“Akira,” Ryuji says. He so rarely says Akira’s name. “What’s wrong?”

His voice is low and scared sounding. Akira doesn’t say anything. He keeps his eyes fixed on Sayuri, and thinks.

Ryuji is so stubbornly loyal that if Akira let anything slip he knows the entire Nijima residence would be in for a rude awakening at 1AM this Christmas morning. There’s no point in escalating this: no way of solving it, as much as Ryuji would - as much as _Akira_ wishes there was.

“I have to leave sooner than I thought,” he settles on. 

His eyes flick to Ryuji, just in time to catch the way his face falls.

“But I - I thought...” 

He stares at Akira, disbelieving, and shakes his head.. 

“Why?”

Akira shrugs. He stuffs his unsteady hands in his pockets so he stops having to see them. “I just do. I don’t have a choice.”

“Bullshit. You’re _you_ , you can - can’t you just...”

Ryuji scrubs a hand through his hair, this frustrated look on his face. Akira doesn’t like seeing him like this, having no way to fix it.

It’s quiet for a moment. Neither of them look at each other. The sink drips steadily, a distant sounding noise.

He hears Ryuji swallow. 

“How soon?” he asks, quietly.

 _Tomorrow_ , Akira thinks.

“Very,” he answers. Ryuji looks up at him like he’s been struck.

His bottom lip disappears into his mouth. He looks away again.

“There was some stuff I wanted to say to you,” he says eventually, his voice soft. His hand curls and uncurls on the counter. “I just thought I’d have more time to do it.”

It wouldn’t be fair of Akira to ask him to say it. It would make things so much worse if Ryuji said what he wanted to hear right now.

“It’s okay,” Akira says. He’s acutely aware of the space between them, of what a lonely sight Ryuji makes in front of him, awkward-limbed and suddenly small. “You don’t have to.”

Ryuji looks up at him, mouth parted, and presses his lips together. 

He looks even more tired now than before. All of the excitement from today has drained out of him completely and left him looking - sad. Just sad. Akira has to turn away.

“Look, it’s late. We’re both exhausted.” He undoes his apron, pulling it off. “Come on, I’ll walk you to the station.”

Ryuji doesn’t move for a minute. He stares at where Akira’s apron hangs on the wall.

“Okay,” he says, voice soft.

Outside it’s dark and cold enough for Akira’s hands to feel numb. They walk to the station side-by-side, the only noise passing between them the sound of their shoes crunching in the snow. 

There’s a weight in the air, a sense of finality Akira was hoping to avoid. Their hands bump together, and at once the tight feeling in his chest that’s been there since Sae spoke to him hours ago becomes suffocating.

Ryuji doesn’t say anything at all. Akira can’t speak. 

They get to the station with a few minutes to spare before the train arrives and stand together in silence, looking in opposite directions. 

Akira can hear the train rattling closer in the distance. If this is how it ends - if this is the last time they’ll ever spend together, it can’t be spent in silence.

“I’m sorry,” he says, and he means it.

Ryuji turns to him. They look at each other, and Akira knows then, his heart sinking, how much he’ll miss him. More than anybody else.

He grabs Akira by the shoulders, pulling him a step closer and holding him there. Then he stares at him with this look on his face like even he isn’t sure what he’s about to do next. 

The rattling sound gets louder and louder. White light flashes across Ryuji’s face. He shakes his head, mouth parted.

“I’m bad at talkin’, anyway,” Ryuji says, and yanks Akira the rest of the way towards him.

Their teeth clack together awkwardly, painfully. Akira touches the soft inside of Ryuji’s bottom lip with his tongue, brief and self-indulgent, and Ryuji makes this sound against his mouth - sharp, shuddery - curling a hand into his hair. 

As far as first kisses go, it’s everything Akira wants. A perfect moment that cuts through everything else. 

The train slows next to them and screeches to a halt. Ryuji pulls away, breathlessly. His fingertips dig into Akira’s shoulders hard enough to hurt. 

He swallows, shaking his head. “You know even when you go, I’ll still...”

Akira gives in, just for a second: reaches up and holds Ryuji’s face in his cold hands.

“Yeah.” Ryuji nods, his eyes closed. The train doors spill out light behind him. “Yeah.”

He takes a deep breath, pressing his cheek into Akira’s palm for a moment, and then he turns around and makes it onto the train the instant before the doors slide shut again.

After another moment, it starts noisily departing the station. Akira watches it go. He touches his bottom lip, the spot where one of Ryuji’s front teeth caught in it, and laughs to himself.

Then he stands there in the dark a little while longer, eyes shut, feeling like part of the quiet, of the city.

 _It’s time_ , he tells himself, and with a sigh, he starts heading home.


End file.
